"Yes--I suppose I do. But it's the tiredness that comes with doing--not drifting. . . . It's we who have got to make the new Heaven and the new Earth, Derek . . ." Again Vane laughed. "Still as idealistic as ever, I see. Six months after peace we shall be scrambling and fighting and snarling again--after jobs and money and work." Margaret Trent was silent, tracing a pattern in the sand with her finger. "The worry of scrambling after a job is not likely to hit you very hard," she said at length. "Which is perhaps as well," he returned lightly; "for I'm certainly too weary to take the trouble. I shall go away, if I'm alive to do it, to the South Sea Islands and live on fruit. The only proviso is that it should be sufficiently ripe to drop into my mouth, and save me the trouble of picking it." The girl turned and looked at him suddenly. "You've got it rather bad, old boy, haven't you?" "Got what?" he asked slowly. "Mental jaundice," she answered. "Your world askew." "Do you wonder?" he returned grimly. "Isn't the world askew?" "And if it is, someone has got to put it back." "That's what the little boy said when he pulled the chest of drawers over on top of him and lay struggling under it. But he couldn't do it himself. It's got beyond us, Margaret--and God seems to have forgotten. There is just a blind, malignant Fate running the show." She looked at him gravely. "You're wrong, Derek--utterly wrong. The game is still in our hands, and we've got to keep it there. What are you smiling at?" "I was wondering," he answered, "whether the last time I was told I was wrong, the sentence would have been concluded similarly. Unfortunately, the speaker died in the middle, thereby proving his contention." "Oh! but you're little," she cried, striking her hands together. "Don't you see that you've got to look beyond the individual--that you've got to think Big?" "We leave that to the newspaper men," he retorted cynically. "Our smiling heroes; our undaunted soldiers! They are heroes, those Tommies; they are undaunted, but it's because they've got to be. They're up against it--and the Juggernaut of Fate knows he's got 'em. And they know he's got 'em. They just eat and drink and are merry for to-morrow they. . . . Ah! no; that's wrong. We never die out here, Margaret; only the other fellow does that. And if we become the other fellow, it's so deuced unexpected I don't suppose it matters much." "But, we've got to go through with it, haven't we?" she said quietly. "Of course we have," he answered with a laugh; "and the knowledge of that fact cuts about as much ice with the men in the mud holes up there as brave little Belgium or suffering little Serbia. I tell you we're all dazed, Margaret--just living in a dream. Some of us take it worse than others, that's all. You want the constitution of an elephant combined with the intelligence of a cow to fight these days."